As is generally well known, the handles of household appliances such as refrigerators, freezers, washers, and dryers, as well as handles of other types of frequently used household items such as shower doors and cabinet fronts tend to collect grease and dirt due to the consistent and repeated use. Accordingly, users spend a great deal of money and effort cleaning these handles in order to maintain their sanitary conditions and esthetic appearance.
It is further well known, that handles of hand-propelled shopping carts accumulate great degree of harmful bacteria posing potential danger to users as such bacteria is transferred from one user to another.
Prior to the design and conception of the present invention, efforts have been made, particularly in the art of shopping carts, to alleviate the problems of harmful bacteria transfer. U.S. Pat. No. 5,820,142 issued to Duer, U.S. Pat. No. 6,065,765 issued to Moseley, U.S. Pat. No. 6,543,794 issued to Tyree, U.S. Pat. No. 5,215,319 issued to Farris and Canadian Pat. No. 2,409,844 issued to Tompkins disclose various designs of the protective sanitary cover for elongated handles. However, these prior art devices are disadvantages either by lack of means to secure side edges of the sanitary cover to each other or by an overlapping condition of one edge over another, especially when various fastening means are employed. Furthermore, the presently employed fastening means such as hook and loop fasteners, snaps, buttons, adhesives and the like increase the cost of such sanitary covers.
Therefore, there is a need for an improved sanitary cover for an elongated handle which can be securely retained on such elongated handle by joining opposed longitudinal edges without the use of fasteners.